Agra, Aug 9 (IANS) In a major crackdown against cyber crime, four people were arrested in Uttar Pradesh’s Agra for running a fake call centre and cheating people from different states across the country on the pretext of providing them jobs, police said on Sunday.
Addressing reporters, Agra Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP) (Cyber Crime), Aditya Kumar said: “A joint operation was carried out by a counter-intelligence team and cyber surveillance team along with the staff of Tajganj Police Station during which four accused have been arrested.”
He said that one of the accused hails from Bihar and already has a criminal case registered against him, while another is a resident of Uttar Pradesh’s Jaunpur. The remaining two are women and residents of Agra.
The senior police official said: “The accused cheated people on the pretext of providing jobs at a company that does not exist legally. The fraud was carried out in three steps — first calls used to be made to the potential ‘candidate’ regarding ‘vacancy’ in the company following which the victims were told to pay ‘registration fees’ using the provided QR code or UPI.”
“Secondly, when the victims were convinced, the accused further asked them to pay extra, around Rs 8,800, for the position of ‘supervisor’ or ‘guard’ at the particular firm. After the victims transferred the money, they were again asked to pay around Rs 10,000 for the joining letter, which was also fake,” DCP (Cyber Crime) Aditya Kumar added.
According to the police officer, questioning of the accused revealed that they were carrying out the fraud from that particular place in Agra for around two years and have also been involved in various other cyber crimes in different places of the country.
“So far, the accused have cheated around 2,500 people across 15 states,” the DCP said.
He mentioned that 10 mobile phones, 35 bank passbooks, multiple cheque books, 28 ATM cards of different banks, eight SIM cards, seven Aadhar cards, six PAN cards, two voter ID cards, 12 QR codes, one laptop, one desktop, among other things have been recovered from the accused.
“Further investigation in underway to establish the backward and forward linkages, about how they found the contacts of the victims and how was the money earned through cheating, utilised,” he said.
–IANS
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